On 15 Dec 2015 15:56, Ulrich Mueller wrote: > >>>>> On Tue, 15 Dec 2015, Mike Frysinger wrote: > > > a flat text file akin to /etc/passwd is not readable. xml is readable. > > ESR's case study about the password file format seems to disagree: > http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch05s01.html#id2901332
i don't generally find anything ESR has to say useful, and his code even less so > I think the name:password:uid:gid:gecos:directory:shell format is > readable well enough for human eyes. having looked at way too many of these, i disagree. it's harder (imo) to scan due to the lack of alignment, it's more of a pita to deal with defaults, and it doesn't permit for additional metadata like i already quoted (the defunct field). > Certainly it is machine readable; > even with standard tools like fgetpwent(3) (or its equivalent in other > programming languages). again, not portable. the format proposed is also trivial to parse by python and awk. -mike
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